mood: awake

Our Metro Detroit radio station’s morning DJ has apparently signed a sweet deal with Healthy Trim because this is the third month in a row he has pretended to use their diet pill. Every week is a new scenario slid into their casual dialogue about how full it kept him, how many pounds he has lost and how much of a miracle the drug is – always followed by plugging the URL and 30-day guarantee.

I’ve seen photos of DJ Mojo who “has lost over 30 pounds” and it looks like he weighs over 300 pounds; the guy has at least 30 pounds of water to shed before he even gets to the fat on his ass.

It was bad enough that every other song was either “Boom boom boom” or “tonight’s gonna be a good night…” but now the absurd bullshit is carrying over into what is supposed to be genuine information. I guess that’s the nature of a pop station, though, in the criss-crossing lines of temporary, artificial joy. Everything is sugarcoated, swallowed quickly and eventually thrown out.

Pop is catchy. Pop moves treadmill belts. Pop is yummy, but pop can feel empty.

Bruce Springsteen, one my favorite singer/songwriters, has explained how his single “Radio Nowhere” comes from the ideas and sounds of fantasy. He said that the scenario, lyrically, wasn’t literal and that it was recorded with intentional aim at the pop genre by tweaking his natural folksinger tone and adding other techniques such as the fade-out.

“Radio Nowhere” is special to me because it conjures the image of a rock and roll hero, a source of quality, drifting across an ocean of airwaves in search of some other sound with content. My dad has looked lost, unable to adapt in the evolution of music, having heard his favorite oldies so many times that it seemed he was running out of songs to listen to. And every year I wait for that small, special amount to skim off from a ton of noise and blah, oftentimes wondering if I’m tuning in or tuning out.

I was spinning round a deal dial

Just another lost number in a file

Trying to find my way home

But all I heard was a drone

This is Radio Nowhere…

Is there anybody alive out there?

Perhaps the secret in enough Healthy Trim tablets is the ability to suppress individual taste.

mood: determined

Looking at the landscape photos I took of home, longingly, all teary-eyed, I had to remind myself that the beauty of it – the endless silence, the isolation from common chaos – did not include the key to growing stronger or getting farther. As much as I’d like to be back there right this second, feeling the breeze, getting lost in an impossible amount of field and forest, it does not see me through my troubles to the other side. That same land was, at one time, limited and frustrating.

Besides, I can go back there for a visit or a walk whenever I have the chance. For right now, in this period, it’s still all there.

And here I am. My brain has been firing a bit more brightly, as of late. In between bounces of the tennis ball, before my serve, rubber soles rolling over the court, there is a simple voice-over accompanying my view of the net’s other side:

Dream.

Bounce, catch. Bounce, catch. Dream.

I’m sitting on the couch, trying to explain to My Guy that I don’t know what makes my brain switch sides, but that I want to stay this person for as long as I can, because I’m happier when I’m in this mind frame.

Dream.

It seems that the decisions I make, the answers I give and the things I weigh – they alternate. They follow my mood or my mood follows them and it’s like two separate circuits inside that can never be running simultaneously. One mode has more energy, the other one is much harder to offend. One is more creative, the other is stubborn.

The last time I sat down to write was months ago, over half a year, when I was unable to sleep. I wrote about two pages that rambled on in conversation with myself as if there were two people talking. The screen was blinding, I was strung out, and it was short-lived. I can’t remember where I ended up in theory but the passage was unsaved, abandoned the moment sleep caught up with me. I disapproved of the material’s quality and, in retrospect, woke up the next day feeling as though I had switched over to a simpler, more sedated self.

My dreams are like stale peeps, I thought, returning My Guy’s serve. I don’t always think while I’m actively focused on something else. A few puddles on the court, a crack running down the center, new shoes getting old fast and stale peeps. Stale peeps floating in the pool next to us, on the other side of the fence, closed for the season.

Man, that’s shit. ‘Stale peeps’ is all you got? Backhand. In, over, forehand. Out.

Turn over a peep and you might win a prize.

It made sense, though. Not everyone would still want them, these dreams that have been kicking around. I’ve had a few of em for a while, now. But suddenly, they seem new. A little different. Remembered.

One thing that I, personally, know about stale peeps – and I thought this in confidence as the point drove home with my ball – is that they’re awfully damn good.

mood: calm

I feel out of sorts in an atmosphere staged for showing thieves their crimes. The chair is cold, the screens are rotating through various corners of the building and Crystal never stops recording.  With so much official business going on, I question the value of my presence in that little room. My voice trails off as she’s tweaking knobs or selecting folders and she says, “Oh, keep going. I multitask.”

Questions posed like pop quizzes. Every other word is scribbled. It doesn’t take long before a strong person hopes to be dismissed and sent back into general chaos.

When monitoring the feel for each associate, Crystal will offer pieces of her life in conversation. The antics of her family are humorous, comfortable, and some of the only times when you’ll really see her at work. Other topics have intentions, if there is a discussion at all; she may suddenly appear, silently retrieving temperatures and data from everyone in the room.

No one can blame Crystal for her robot parts - after all - working to improve our cruel reality is not a joyous task, nor is it one that allows for favorites. She knows narks from the highest to lowest class who are liars, liars who are crooks, crooks with numbered days and has the overall pleasure of hearing them lie to her face on a daily basis. On top of this inconvenience there is too much paperwork and too many policies that keep her confined to that little room, merely noting their dishonesty until one of the files gets fat.

She is oddly surprised today, that I’ve recognized the change in her hair color every few months. Granted, her entrance is often swift and unannounced but I tend to catch her in the last stretch of aisle way, to her room in the back. How does one not notice a fresh head of golden curls, or Suddenly Straight Brunette, or Gone Gothic black, rushing by?

Rarely will someone have that many versions of themselves, all done up so professionally. Makeup complexion, eyebrow arch, highlights and not a split end in sight. So many loud variances for such a low profile. Could changing costumes help ease the monotony of work or are they chemical reactions to the flighty, ever-shifting people around her?

She would make many friends, she comments on the staff, if prosecuting them in the end wasn’t so awkward.

I apologize for asking a question that may be too personal, wondering if her work principles ever trickle into what little time is left over.

“It’s very hard to stop,” she answers, almost immediately. “It’s hard not to know what someone is hiding. This,” Crystal concludes, waving her palm over the desk of pulp and technology, “has pretty much ruined every relationship I’ve ever had.”

Such are the woes of our watchful girl above.

mood: contemplative

Sometimes I do Nicole’s homework. Not, like, filling out her papers to hand in, but I’ll steal from the assignments and do them on my own. The criminal justice curriculum has a lot of fluff about morality applied to law, viewpoint, self-perception blah blah blah.  She leaves her shit all over the back room and I am not one of those people who can see a notebook lying on the table and leave it closed. Cause I know notebooks. They are for secret secrets!

She just got asked by a professor to write about something very dear to her, and the class is not allowed to answer “family” or “friends”. What a whopper card, right? Family and friends – isn’t that everyone’s first answer? Someone else, be it God or Toothless Tom? This can’t be that easy.

What’s important to me? I can’t give an immediate answer that feels right. Do I care about who I am or…something that makes me alive? Do I answer “music”, though it works like a drug, making me sound like an addict? Would it be wise to tell the professor that it’s important to me, to be hooked on things?

And what kind of a tricky question is this? Why do you want to know what I’m about? What is there, to me? Do people’s answers categorize them in some way?

Enjoying life, as selfish as it sounds, is pretty important to me. Does that answer make me a bad person?

Animal rights are biggies, for me. Dogs and cats, especially, because of how we’ve taken them from the wild, made them love us unconditionally only to repay the majority of them with pain and famine. It isn’t a happy truth but I hold it close. I wish every animal abuser saw a cold jail cell. What is the root of that – justice?

Ooh, I wonder if they’re supposed to answer “justice” cause that’s their major!

Haha, I solved it!

Nicole might claim her Golden Girls boxset. I better warn her.

mood: determined

My best wishes go out to those who are suffering from the dip in our economy. For several months I kept asking what the fuss was about. All I saw, despite our previous rise in gas prices, was that a lot of Stuff was on sale.

When work cut me down a few hours, I cheered. Minimal work with full benefits were all I saw at the time. I didn’t realize it was a prelude to downsizing.

A lot of people at my place complain about how hard it is to find a job. I thought it was because of their idividual faults like numerous spelling errors on their resumes, or perhaps they sit down for interviews with missing front teeth. I thought this way because I jumped into Real World 101 very late, without an ounce of credit to my name (something I would not reveal), and got to pick which company I wanted to work for.

So why worry? If you don’t have it, fake it. Just do what you have to do and get where you need to be, right? Not so true. I’m starting to see what everyone was worried about – not just those with crimminal records and toothless grins.

The giant scissors came out last week, cutting various people loose from my company and my boys’ company. It didn’t matter how old you were, how long you had been with them or what was going to happen to you – if you weren’t uniquely responsible for the money making, you got laid off. A lot of people who have always been around didn't come back on Monday. Shocked and silenced, Brad and I came home feeling like some of the last ones standing.

It’s real, isn’t it? What a fuckin’ bummer.

Now I’m evaluating our resources, our meal plans, our weekend hoo-ha’s, everything. There will be more board games and less outings. Maybe the heat doesn’t always have to read 74. Maybe I don’t need all of that shit off ebay.

I could stand to pay attention.

And what about the people who were barely getting by, before, who you knew were thankful for the shit end of the stick?

What are they going to do?